“This was the first of the Apes films I’d ever seen. I’d actually blogged it before. I hit most of the general details of the film then, so no need to rehash. What I was missing at the time was the context with the rest of the franchise. I think I actually hadn’t missed too much.
Okay so it’s not so much the whole rest of the franchise. Except for the nod to revolutionary Caesar in the later films, the continuity really only goes thru the first two movies in the future. It doesn’t so much fit in with what happened when the chimps came back to present earth. That said, I was really impressed with the film as an individual piece of cinema when I first saw it, and I’m equally impressed with how it fits into the mythology.
The film establishes where the intellegence came from that led to the apes evolution, and it also deals with what wiped out much of the human population. That whole transition is pretty seamless. I remember that I had expected the ape revolution to be the human killer. The virus thing during the credits was a genius curveball. I’m really excited to see where that goes in the next installment.
As far as references, I’d caught the obvious dialog one before. There were a few more lines (strangely also given to Tom Felton) that were a bit more below the radar. And actually, in trying to find said dialog, I found that the full sequence actually gets an homage, but the lines are split up elsewhere. There was also some of the names. I knew from the way they’d referred to Bright Eyes that name must have had some significance. Now I understand. There was also a “”Cornelia”” thrown in there quickly.
Well, it’ll be a few days until I can complete this project with the prequel sequel. Until then, how about a fun clip of Andy Serkis.”